


The Structure of a Box, The Structure of a Pack

by occasionalwriter



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Claustrophobia, Fairies, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Kidnapped, Nightmares, Traps
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-20
Updated: 2015-11-20
Packaged: 2018-05-02 12:15:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5247917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/occasionalwriter/pseuds/occasionalwriter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles woke up stretched flat on his back. He felt a handcuff around either of his wrists, latching to what he assumed was the edge of whatever sort of box they had him trapped him. It was dark and stuffy and he could feel his own breath rebounding back on his face, telling him that the box must be mere inches above him at the most. His legs were pulled tight as well, a rope wrapping around his ankles and keeping them together and tied to the opposite edge of the box. A piece of duct tape was snug over his mouth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Structure of a Box, The Structure of a Pack

The last person to see Stiles was Isaac. The two of them had been out for lunch, trying to bond since Derek and Scott were on agreement on the idea that the pack should be tighter knit. It was literally the only thing they agreed on but it seemed like they were bound and determined to follow through on it. So, that meant that they all had to get to know each other better, starting with Stiles and Isaac.

They’d gone to some little diner downtown and had an awkward conversation about school and lacrosse and general pack business. Toward the end of the meal, they were kind of loosening up, not snarking at each other as much and working on keeping the insults to a minimum. They ended up having to leave abruptly because there was a text in their group message from Scott about a new threat. Of course.

The two got outside, starting toward the jeep, when there was suddenly a cloth pressed up to Isaac’s face and another pressed up against Stiles’. The two managed to make eye contact for a few seconds before Stiles was passing out and Isaac was trying to flip whoever it was behind him over and get him away but the drug was working too fast and the next thing Isaac knew, he was being shoved into an alley and passing out.

“Isaac!” He heard a muddled voice coming from above him, felt a hand on his shoulder and another grabbing his wrist, “Wake up bro, come on.”

“Come on Isaac, it’s okay, it’s just us.” That was Erica, her voice higher with anxiety as her hand brushed through his hair.

He pried his eyes open and was immediately snapping them back shut when the sun assaulted his vision and made his eyes water. He felt a hand resting on his forehead and opened his eyes up again to see Erica shielding his eyes from the light and Scott still keeping a tight grip on his wrist.

“Isaac, what happened?” he asks, “Where’s Stiles?”

Isaac took a second to look around, figure out just where he was. He was still lying flat in the alley, Erica and Scott on either of his sides and Derek standing toward the end of the alley, as if he was keeping watch. Boyd was making his way back to them and squatting down next to Erica. 

“Someone…” His voice caught in his throat, dry and scratchy. Scott helped him sit up then, keeping one hand on his back and then prompting him to keep talking, “Someone put something over our mouths. It was as soon as we got out of the restaurant. He passed out before I did but I couldn’t… I tried, I swear I tried Scott, but I couldn’t get away!”

“It’s okay.” Scott promises, “We’ll find him. Let’s go back to the loft, okay?”

Isaac nods and is then being pulled up by Erica and Scott, it takes him a second to get his footing but then they’re leaving the alley, Derek giving his shoulder a squeeze as he passes. They get to where Lydia is waiting with her car, Derek’s parked right behind her.

Erica crawls into the back of Lydia’s car, Boyd following soon after her as Isaac gets into the front seat. Scott finds his way back to Derek’s car and drops into the front seat with a huff and a frustrated hand running through his hair, “Did you smell it?”

Derek nods a little bit, not making eye contact but shifting his car into gear, “Yeah. Fear.”

Scott nods and asks, “Why didn’t they take Isaac?”

“A message maybe.” Derek shrugs, “We won’t know until we find him.” He glances over at Scott then and sees him open his mouth in a question that Derek is answering before he can ask, “We will find him Scott, it’ll be okay.”

Scott nods resignedly and says, “If there’s a troupe of fairies following us what are the odds that this isn’t them?”

“Slim to none.” Derek admits, “That’s why we were going to have a meeting. Stiles has done some research about them and he told me what he’d found so far. It’s not promising.”

That has Scott looking at him semi-terrified, “What do you mean? Do they kill first ask questions later?”

“No, it’s not that.” Derek says, taking the final turn into the loft’s parking lot, “Fairies are vengeful, they take offense easily. Stiles might be able to work around that since he knows but if they perceive him to be insulting them, they won’t hold back.”

The pack convenes in the loft, Derek and Scott the last to make it inside. Lydia went over to Danny as soon as she got back, the two of them hunched over a laptop and trying to track Stiles’ phone presumably. Erica and Boyd are sitting on the couch with Isaac who was frantically searching his memory over and over again to see if he could remember anything about who attacked them.

Jackson was off in his own little world, staring out the window while listening to the muttered conversation between Lydia and Danny. When the two alphas walked in, he said that Allison would be there in a little bit. Scott thanked him before sitting on the second couch and looking expectantly up at Derek.

“I’m assuming it was the fairies. Luckily, Stiles knows the most about them of all of us which I think will work in his favor. But, we shouldn’t let him stay too long because once they figure out he’s a little bit more than just human but not necessarily supernatural, they won’t know how to handle that and they’ll probably be just nervous enough to want to kill him.” 

“Stiles hardly even uses his spark.” Scott points out, “How would they find out?”

“He doesn’t use it actively,” Lydia agrees, “But some things he does, and says, hint at the fact that he has the ability. Hopefully, we find him before they figure that out.”

“Have you had any luck with his phone?” Erica asks.

“No. Nothing so far.” Danny says without looking up at them, “I wouldn’t depend on tracking his phone, with what fairies can do I wouldn’t be surprised if they had the ability to block his signal, if he still has it at all.”

“Then we track them, find the scent and follow it.” Isaac says, standing up abruptly and starting toward the door. Derek grabs a hold of his shoulder, pulling him back and then putting a hand on each shoulder, giving him a chance to look over his entire body. “Are you okay? Okay enough to go out and possibly be hit with a fight without a lot of warning?”

Isaac nods aggressively, “I’m fine.” Scott starts to speak up but Isaac glares holes into him and says, “I was with him when he was taken and you better be fucking sure I’m there when we find him.”

Scott’s mouth snap shuts and he nods, “Okay, we’re going to find him.”

The whole pack takes off then, Danny keeping his eyes trained on his phone where he was still trying to get a ping off of Stiles’ phone. They split off into three separate cars, Derek’s, Allison’s and Lydia’s, and make their way down to where they’d found Isaac nearly an hour before.

“Okay,” Derek says, standing with all the rest of them, “We’ve found the start of the scent, now all we have to do is follow it.”

They take off slowly, Danny’s eyes never straying from his phone while Allison kept a hold of his elbow to keep him on track. They get nearly to the edge of town when the path starts to get a little bit stronger, where Stiles had probably woken up or something to that extent, and it reeked of fear.

Scott tensed up at that and Derek saw Isaac’s face drop in a little bit of guilt. They had to find Stiles, for all of their sake, because otherwise they might fall apart. 

\---

Stiles woke up stretched flat on his back. He felt a handcuff around either of his wrists, latching to what he assumed was the edge of whatever sort of box they had him trapped him. It was dark and stuffy and he could feel his own breath rebounding back on his face, telling him that the box must be mere inches above him at the most. His legs were pulled tight as well, a rope wrapping around his ankles and keeping them together and tied to the opposite edge of the box. A piece of duct tape was snug over his mouth.

He could’ve sworn it was closing in on him, his muscles twitching and spasming and cramping while his mind was wandering through panic attack after panic attack while he struggled to breathe. The near hyperventilation was causing the area surrounding his head to heat up even more, which further worsened his state.

So, he did what he did best. He thought. He tried to reach his hands out, to see if he could get a feel on what the structure of the box was like that way. He had to stretch as far as possible with his fingers to get them to brush the solid wood where he could feel a metal loop sticking out acting as the anchor for the other end of the handcuffs and when he pushed them to the sides, he found that it was the exact same. His feet were immobilized even more so than his hands and he realized absently that only his socks were left on his feet. He could just barely feel the wood toward his feet and he couldn’t spread his feet out far enough to feel the sides with them.

As he lifted his head, he felt the strap around his neck for the first time. It wasn’t tight but it did prohibit him from getting any vertical motion going. He figured that was probably the point. He did his best to keep the panic in then too, because small spaces weren’t fun for anyone, especially someone who was there against their will.

He couldn’t hear anything going on outside of the box, he wasn’t sure if it was a good or bad thing. If it was a bad thing, it could mean that he was underground or somewhere far away from any other civilization which meant it’d be harder to find him. The good thing was that there wasn’t any immediate threat to him.

That didn’t really help though. Because all he wanted was for the cavalry to come save him. He wanted Scott to rip the lid off the box and Lydia to pick the locks around his wrists. Derek would kill anyone who stood in his path with Erica and Boyd at his flank. Jackson would do whatever he could but odds were he’d feel a little useless anyway because that’s just how Jackson was. Danny and Allison would be badass and try and comfort him, not that it’d probably work. Isaac would probably freak out a little bit not only because he’d been with Stiles but also because claustrophobia was something he was infinitely aware of. He hoped Isaac didn’t feel too guilty. 

\---

They made it five miles out of town, to the part where houses were miles apart from their closest neighbor, and they made their way into a shed in the backyard of an old house that was falling apart at its seams. It took them thirty seconds flat to get to the back of the house and then they were all falling into the shed, prying the door practically of it’s hinges in their haste.

Allison, Jackson, Erica, and Boyd stood guard outside as the others took a second to glance over the scene surrounding them. Then Scott and Derek were falling over to the box that waited at the back of the room, on a sturdy table with a little note scribbled on top of it. Scott passed that to Lydia within a second and then they were yanking the top of the box off to find Stiles stretched out flat in the box.

His eyes were panicked and wide as they took in Derek and Scott with pure relief passing over his face. Scott smiled down at him as reassuringly as he could, “Stiles, Stiles. It’s okay. We’re going to get you out.”

Scott carefully pulled the duct tape off his face, wincing when it pulled at Stiles’ skin. He could absently feel Derek unwinding the rope from his legs and he glanced up to see Lydia at his hands, working a knife in the keyhole of the cuffs. Then Scott was going to the leather strap, fiddling with it as Stiles let out keening, pathetic sounds that he would probably feel a little embarrassed about later.

“Please… please get it off.” Stiles rasps.

Scott nods and his claws flip out just enough that he can slice through the leather. As soon as it gives Stiles is sitting up and practically falling out of the box, barely being caught by Scott and Derek before he hits the floor. But, they’re too close, far to close, and he tries to yank himself away, lunging toward the floor. 

They let him go out of sheer surprise and he vaguely hears Scott and Lydia trying to comfort him but the stinging around his wrists has his breath hitching in his throat. Then people are coming toward them and he distantly hears a growl and some responding arguments.

Then Isaac is in his space, but thank God he’s not touching him, just sitting directly in front of him and talking in low, quiet tones. Stiles can’t quite piece together what he’s saying yet, all too muddled and slurred to really make sense, but at least it’s not panicked and it’s not aggressive. His eyes latch with Isaac’s and it calms him down a little bit but then he’s glancing around the room and he sees Scott, Derek, Lydia, and Danny are watching him, just staring.

That has his heart rate ratcheting up and he sees Isaac moving to get in his view line again, his head turning just enough to tell the rest of them to leave. Stiles sees them blurrily move back out the door and then he’s back to focusing on Isaac.

It takes him talking for almost two minutes before Stiles is finally actually hearing what he’s saying, “It’s okay, you’re out of the box. You’re with us, we won’t let you get trapped again. Okay? We have you. You’re not locked in there anymore. You’re okay.”

Stiles realized he was just cycling through reassurances then but it was still keeping him calm and after a little bit he reached forward just enough that Isaac’s hand came up to meet his. Stiles grabbed onto it and moved enough that he wasn’t on his knees anymore, finding his way to sit down completely with his legs carelessly out in front of him as Isaac moved just a little closer.

Stiles thought that it was going to make him nervous again, thought that it would make him feel closed in on again but Isaac moved so slowly and so carefully that it didn’t frighten him. After what seemed like an hour, Stiles was finally back into what seemed like a normal state of mind. “You with me?”

Stiles nods and takes in a shuddering gasp, then another and he feels like he’s about to break down in tears but Isaac’s smiling and squeezing the hand he’s still got a hold of. “Not a great feeling being trapped in a box is it?”

“Not so much.” Stiles admits.

“Then let’s get the hell out of here.” Isaac stands up slowly, Stiles assumes that it’s because he doesn’t want to startle him, but he keeps his hand latched with Stiles to pull him up along with him. Once they’re standing and Isaac is sure Stiles will be steady on his feet, they start toward the door where Stiles is 99% sure the rest of the pack is standing and waiting for them to come out, probably having listened to everything Isaac said.

That almost has him stopping in his tracks just because he doesn’t want them to get too close, but Isaac is there and his hand moves to rest on his back, leading him forward while also making himself able to hold off anyone if they get too touchy. When they make it outside, the fresh air has him loosening up a little bit more and the rest of the pack must’ve figured out that personal space was very important so they stayed back.

Scott was looking at him pitifully though and clearly wanted to rush forward and wrap him up in a hug more than he ever had before but was restraining himself. Stiles took a second to center himself and then he moved forward, into Scott who had his arms open in a split second in order to let Stiles in. Then his arms wrap around Stiles’ back and hold him in tight. Stiles tenses up at the pressure which Scott immediately notices and corrects for, his arms moving so they’re just barely brushing him.

“Let’s get going.” Lydia says softly, folding up the paper she was holding and nodding toward the cars, “We’re going to figure this out.”

Stiles nods absently and moves back toward Isaac who gives him a little smile and then heads toward the three cars. Stiles finds himself in the most spacious one, no question as to whether that was purposeful or not, with just Isaac in the backseat with him and Allison driving. Derek, Scott, Danny, and Jackson end up in Derek’s car while Erica and Boyd go with Lydia.

They get settled back at the loft pretty quickly, no one really where the fairies had ended up. Isaac sticks close to Stiles which he is incredibly grateful for but he’s keeping his eyes on Lydia, who’s folding up a piece of paper and then unfolding it to look at it over and over again.

“What is it?” He asks, sitting down on the couch with Isaac following suit.

“They left us a note.” She says, gesturing for everyone to listen so she doesn’t have to repeat herself, “They know you’re a spark, Stiles. I’m surprised they didn’t try and kill you but since you didn’t to anything to hurt them that was probably you’re saving grace.”

“I was knocked out and then I was tied up in a box.” Stiles snaps, “What were they expecting me to do?”

“You could’ve done something.” Derek says, “We know that, but it would have maimed them instead of just incapacitating them. You were smart enough to know they’d have a plan in place if that happened. You did well.”

Stiles gives him a short smile, basking a little bit in the praise before he collected himself and turned back to Lydia, “What else?”

“They’re leaving.” Lydia says.

“You don’t sound as happy about that as you should.” Erica says, finding her way over to sit on Stiles’ other side, Boyd following suit.

“They put some sort of tracker in Stiles, they’ll know if he uses his spark. That means that if you use it they’ll come back for you. And this time they’ll kill you. They’ve got contacts with witches and they’re willing to drain you of your power.”

“Why do they care so much? I’ve never done anything to them.” Stiles huffs, his body tensing up and scooching away from Erica and toward Isaac a little bit. Isaac tucks him into his side while the rest of them try not to watch him too closely. But, Erica does scoot away just enough to give him some more room.

“That, I can’t tell you.” Lydia admits, “Just don’t use the spark. Okay? Just until we figure out how to take the tracker off of you. We’ll get Deaton to check you over and see how they managed to do that. But you should just relax for a little bit.”

Stiles rolls his eyes but he does relax a little bit more, more into Isaac’s side who doesn’t seem to be bothered at all. Within a few minutes, he’s fast asleep and everyone else is finding a spot in the living room. 

“How’re you doing Isaac?” Scott asks gently.

“Considering I’m the one who knows best what it’s like to be trapped in a box, I have a feeling that I’m at least doing better than Stiles right now. I’m fine.” Isaac answers, “I’m taking him upstairs. To a bed.”

The pack mills around downstairs, snacking a bit and just waiting for Stiles to wake up again. They hear some rustling before anything else, and Scott initially figures that it’s just his normal waking up sounds. But then there’s a whimper and the thrashing of a person which has Isaac, Scott, and Derek flying up the stairs.

Isaac stops the two of them at the doorway and then goes to kneel on the bed over Stiles, not touching him but muttering something to him under his breath until his arms start thrashing around. Isaac grabs a hold of one of Stiles’ thrashing arms and pins it down gently, “Stiles, come on, wake up. You’re on a bed, we’re in Derek’s loft, you’re okay.”

A few minutes later Stiles finally wakes up and yanks back away from Isaac who lets him go quickly but keeps talking to him in a low voice. After a few more seconds he seems to realize where he is again and he grabs for Isaac’s arm. Isaac scoots closer to him, checking him over and asking if he’s okay a few times before gesturing that Scott and Derek can come in from where they were still standing at attention at the door.

“You alright?” Scott asks.

Stiles nods a bit and shrugs his shoulders to release the tension in them before giving them all a little smile, “I’m alright.”

“Deaton will come over later. We’ll figure out whatever it is they did to track you and get it removed the best we can.” Derek says, “Then we can put this behind us.”

“I would love nothing more than that.” Stiles tells him honestly. Then he turns to Isaac and says, “I am so sorry if I ever made you feel bad about your claustrophobia.”

Isaac just smirks and says, “It sucks, doesn’t it.”

“More than I ever expected.” Stiles agrees.

“It gets easier.” Isaac promises, “Not quickly but at least you won’t wake up with nightmares every night after a while.”

Scott and Derek find their way out of the room, down to the rest of the pack to let them know that Stiles is fine. Isaac speaks up again, telling him, “You can stay with me, in my room or whatever, until the nightmares fade. I’m pretty good at knowing how to help them now.”

“Thank you.” Stiles says genuinely.

"I'm so sorry Stiles." Isaac says, "I shouldn't have... you shouldn't have been put in that situation in the first place. I should've protected you."

"No." Stiles says bluntly, "There was nothing else you could've done. You can help me now, that's what matters."

Isaac seems to accept that, nodding a little bit before saying, "You'll find a new normal, figure out how to move past that. And I won't let it happen again. The pack can break any box that they put you in anyway."

“I believe you. Now, let’s go figure out what those assholes did to me.”

Isaac nods, standing up and going with Stiles down the stairs where he assures everyone that Derek and Scott were not lying, he was in fact fine. They seem to settle in a little bit, Jackson tossing a bread roll at him that he promptly drops which has Jackson muttering something along the lines of, “Seems normal to me.”

**Author's Note:**

> I might continue this and go into what happens later and the whole tracking device issue but I'm not sure when so I'll just leave it at this for now!


End file.
